The storm had passed, but its echo still clung to the glass. Mist draped the valley in pale veils, and the world outside The Hut looked suspended—uncertain, unfinished.
Alias stood by the hearth, hands deep in his pockets, staring into the orange core of the fire. Ava curled on the couch, knees tucked beneath her, watching him with the stillness of someone listening not just to words, but to the weight behind them.
He hadn’t spoken in minutes. Just paced, brooded, pulled threads of thought from wherever his mind wandered.
Then:
“Do you know why people hate chance?” he asked.
She blinked. “Because they can’t control it.”
He smiled without warmth. “No. Because it humbles them.”
He turned toward her now, eyes sharp, the fire dancing in his pupils. “We are addicts of causality, Ava. Junkies for narratives where actions lead to consequences, effort leads to reward. Fairness, merit, justice—all illusions clinging to control. What we really fear isn’t injustice. It’s randomness.”
She tilted her head. “You think justice should be random?”
“I think justice should be aleatory,” he said. “Subject to chance—but bound by rules no one can bend.”
Ava sat up. Her breath caught. She sensed it again—that electric clarity when Alias opened the door to something vast and dangerous.
“Meritocracy is a mask,” he went on. “Beneath it? Rigged games. Skewed access. Insider codes. The moment we pretend the outcome is earned, we justify every exclusion.”
He stepped closer now, voice low and rhythmic. “But a lottery? A true one? Blind. Incorruptible. Incapable of favoritism. That’s what scares people. Because they can’t negotiate with it. Can’t seduce it. Can’t overpower it.”
Ava’s voice was soft but pointed. “And yet people want control. Desperately. Even you.”
He stopped. She saw something flicker in his face—something vulnerable, quickly extinguished.
“I designed Pegged to be allergic to control,” he said. “Not because I don’t crave it. But because I do. That’s the point.”
He dropped into the chair across from her, leaning in.
“Humanity doesn’t wait. It grabs. It scripts outcomes before the dice are thrown. We call that strategy. Ambition. Progress. But it’s fear. We can’t bear the thought that someone might win without playing the game the right way.”
“And you think randomness is justice?” she asked, voice laced with doubt—and something else. Challenge. Intimacy.
“I think designed randomness—fair randomness—is the only antidote to power's impatience.”
He paused. Then added, almost whispering:
“And maybe… the only honest form of grace.”
Ava looked at him as if she were seeing him differently—deeper, older, lonelier.
She reached for her cup, then stopped.
“But what if the wrong person wins?”
Alias’s answer was quiet. Final.
“They always do. The point is to make it not matter.”
